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Asteroid set to come closer to the Earth than the moon Nov. 8
- Achshar 15y agoBrace yourselves: the doomsday articles/memes/stories are coming.. PS will it be visible to naked eye? if yes then when and where and for how long and where in the sky? can there be a real time Google earth 3d simulation like NASA did for space shuttle launch?
- nickpinkston 15y agoGood question - an aircraft carrier nearer than the moon? I can't imagine that'd be visible to the naked eye - even ships on the horizon disappear pretty quick. Then again you can see satellites sometimes, but that's like 4 orders of magnitude closer.
- Achshar 15y agowell but if it comes when its night and it has a tail long enough and is also bright enough,and is close to moon from the perspective of someone on earth and hence moon light makes it more visible, then.. who knows??
- maaku 15y agoAsteroids don't have tails.
- cbr 15y agoShips disappear on the horizon because of curvature, not distance.
- nickpinkston 15y agoLOL - I know that... I mean well I look at them from line of sight (on a mountain) only 30 miles away they're little specs...
- brlewis 15y agoThe asteroid's surface is darker than charcoal at optical wavelengths. Amateur astronomers who want to get a glimpse at YU55 will need a telescope with an aperture of 6 inches (15 centimeters) or larger.
- Achshar 15y agohmm looks like i skipped that part :(
- lutorm 15y agoYeah, it's the low albedo that kills you. Something that large made of ice would probably be quite bright. Quick OOM calc: This thing has an area proportional to the moon of (200m/1700km)^2. The moon has an albedo of ~0.12. An object with albedo 1 would thus have a brightness of ~1e-7 of the Moon's. The full Moon has a magnitude of -12.7, so such an object would have a magnitude of -12.7-2.5log10(1e-7), or about 4.8. That's clearly visible to the naked eye at a dark site, but not very impressive.
- Achshar 15y agoIts funny how here you get down voted for not reading a part of news thoroughly, or for that matter being wrong. (Or even for acknowledging that you were wrong), i am dying laughing here guys haha..! great work keep up.. EDIT: in case you couldn't fathom, that was sarcasm. EDIT 2: seriously, stop it! or reply as to why are you down voting? is it a crime to mistakenly post a comment and then acknowledge your mistake or are you guys just some proud 'elite' HNers?
- udp 15y agoGeneral rule of thumb: If you find yourself editing your post asking people not to downvote, it's time to delete it.
- Achshar 15y ago"or reply as to why are you down voting?" well i don't want to get upvotes but if you disagree with me then please take some more time to write a quick comment as to why. Well i posted asking if it will be visible to naked eye, someone quoted a part of the story (indirectly) saying that it won't be and i happened to have missed that part, and i get down voted (for missing reading a part of the story).. well then i acknowledge that i missed it and i get down voted still even then i asked the down voter why was he is down voting my comments and guess what.. i got down voted.. again. but no one has balls to write back, or maybe they are super busy with their work but anyways, and i wont edit this comment but i can say two things: - you (or any of the downvoters) probably won't reply to this comment either. - this comment will (almost certainly) be down voted too. lets see how correct i am..
- knieveltech 15y agoYou worry entirely too much about karma.
- Achshar 15y agoagain.. i dont need karma, i am just saying that if someone disagrees with me, just comment and tell me why, so that we can discuss or i can know why am i wrong.
- adyus 15y agoLet's hope it has enough velocity to escape Earth's field and carry on. I'm sure it does, but I'll keep my fingers crossed, just in case.
- Achshar 15y agofrom NASA's gif, it doesn't even bend its trajectory.. and also it's gravity will not affect earth's tides and tectonic plates :) EDIT: although from the gif it appears that it was a close call on the moon. But i close my eyes and i see a world where i get out and see a small piece of rock hit our moon with a decent explosion when the moon is full. Man if it does't affect out planet in any way, i would really like to see that happen. Gives me goosebumps every time i visualize it! amazing..
- ibrow 15y agoThere's a thought. What would happen, hypothetically speaking, if an asteroid large enough were to hit the moon and spin it out of its orbit? What would happen to life here on Earth? Obviously tides would be affected, and I am assuming that this in itself would probably affect a lot of animals, fish, birds etc?
- Achshar 15y agowell moon moving out of its trajectory means alot more than tides (which in itself is pretty darn serious) IMO. The nights would be absolutely dark, also earth's rotation speed (AFAIK) is also affected by moon's gravity and bulges in both earth and moon's softer crust. Plus maybe we can adapt to such changes but our culture will change and it will be alot more difficult to live through that, imagine explaining to your kids/grandchildren what moon is (or rather was) and how it looked when it was closer/farther. PS if moon gets a major hit, its highly unlikely earth stays 'physically' unaffected. The aftermath of the collision would leave numerous chunks of huge rocks in earth's near space and it would be almost certain that some of then then hit earth. And the effect of decent sized rock hitting the planet is better known to our long lost friends, the dinosaurs :)
- Cushman 15y agoThe Moon is much larger and much farther away from the Earth than you are probably imagining when you hear this. Still cool, though.
- 127001brewer 15y agoHere's an image of the Earth (on the left) and the Moon (on the right) to get a better sense of the distance between the two: http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/51000/51969/EarthMoon_juno_2011238_lrg.jpg http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/51000/5196...
- peteretep 15y agoAlso: http://www.freemars.org/jeff/planets/Luna/Luna2c.png http://www.freemars.org/jeff/planets/Luna/Luna2c.png
- losvedir 15y agoWow, I'm not sure I fully grasped the distance until I saw that picture. The fact that people actually went allllll the way out there and back just astounds me.
- mynameishere 15y agoI like this better. Also shows you the speed of light. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Speed_of_light_from_Earth_to_Moon.gif http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Speed_of_...
- afterburner 15y agoWell, cosmically speaking, that does seem quite close.
- macrael 15y agoAnyone know how fast it is going relative to the earth? And I'd love to get an answer to wether it will be visible.
- arien 15y ago13.72km/s - 49392km/h Source: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php (scroll to the bottom for Earth approaching objects)
- suprgeek 15y agoWould be interesting if during the flyby our analysis revealed that it was made up of a Gold core or something :). Suddenly NASA might get a bunch of funding to prepare for the next flyby
- blhack 15y agoI hear stuff like this a lot (mining asteroids for precious metals)... Wouldn't flooding the market with that much gold...crash it? Are we really talking about that many billions and billions of dollars worth of potential revenue from mining an asteroid? This all just seems like fun sci-fantasy.
- maaku 15y agoWould it sound less far-fetched if we talked about mining asteroids for rare-earth metals, conductive metals like copper, industrial metals like titanium, etc?
- sukuriant 15y agoGold is an industrial metal, though
- maaku 15y agoYes, but that has very little to do with its value on the exchange.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hugh3 15y agoThe sad part is that regardless of whether it's copper or gold, the economics of mining asteroids still doesn't work out.
- ericd 15y ago
- cwilson 15y agoAm I the only one who read the article hoping for a "If it DID hit the earth, X would happen..."?
- aaronbrethorst 15y agoThe object that caused the 1908 Tunguska event is estimated to be either 40 or 60 meters in diameter[1], and it still managed to do an incredible amount of damage[2]. The object described here has a diameter of 400 meters. My understanding is that this wouldn't be anywhere near as devastating as the impact associated with the K-T extinction event, but it certainly wouldn't be very good for anyone. [1] http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=179 http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=179 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
- bh42222 15y agoA couple of nights ago a had strange dream about asteroids hitting earth. Didn't think much of it... still don't think much it.... but I would like to know where this would hit if it were to hit.
- orblivion 15y agoThat's kindof like not having a sweater, and asking what color it would be if you had one. If you alter reality such that it would hit, I think you sortof have your arbitrary choice of where.
- hugh3 15y agoHmm, I wonder if the poles would get hit less often than the tropics due to the distribution of asteroids being more or less in the ecliptic, or whether that's not sufficiently significant. Probably not -- I don't know of any latitude-dependent distribution of lunar craters.
- jerfelix 15y agoIsn't about half the universe closer to the Earth than to the moon (at a particular time)? Meaning: stand on a point of the Earth such that the moon is situated exactly above the opposite side of the Earth. Then look up. All that stuff you see is closer to the Earth than the moon.
- hexagonc 15y agoI suppose so but that is not really the point. The point is that the asteroid will be closer to the Earth than the moon is to Earth. Now, that is worth noting.
- mattmanser 15y agoUm, short answer, no. You're not related to the Ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Traal by any chance are you?
- duggan 15y agoThis is the logical extension of the peek-a-boo fallacy. The moon doesn't stop being closer to the earth simply because you can't see it from a particular point on the Earth. About the only thing you can say is that if you were to proceed outward on a linear path from the opposite side of the Earth from that which the moon is currently positioned, then you would reach something other than the moon sooner than you would reach the moon. But that would be saying nothing, really.
- sp332 15y agoHaha, yes! They meant "closer to the earth than the moon is", not "closer to the earth than to the moon." It will never meet that second criterion, since it will only be about 20% closer to the earth than the moon is.
- whyme 15y agoAnyone have a recommendation for a kick ass telescope that could see this thing? Best bang for the buck kinda deal.
- ryanhuff 15y agoI can't imagine how difficult it would be to target and track this thing with a consumer-grade telescope.
- bradleyland 15y agoIt's actually much easier to locate and track large, distant objects than it is to track small, (relatively) close objects. Ever try to track a jet with a pair of binoculars? Not easy.
- shasta 15y agoI'd guess that roughly 50% of asteroids passing by end up closer to the earth than the moon.
- meric 15y agoHmm, the Mayans did quite a good job. They only guessed wrong by 324,600 kilometers and 53 days.